62 JULY-AUGUST 2025 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL AFSA TERM REPORT As we do every two years, we present to you the term report of the outgoing AFSA Governing Board. This document outlines the priorities, highlights, lowlights, challenges, and successes that AFSA has had in the past two years. This report is part of AFSA’s commitment to transparency. The report covers two eventful years, which included both the centennial of AFSA and the Foreign Service, as well as recent efforts to dismantle Foreign Service agencies, remove collective bargaining, and downsize the federal workforce, including the Foreign Service. We do our best to capture these momentous events, and everything in between, in the following pages. —Ásgeir Sigfússon, Executive Director Let me start by thanking all our members for supporting AFSA during this 2023-2025 Governing Board term. Without your dues, donations to the Legal Defense Fund, and willingness to volunteer, AFSA would not have been able to survive. We have used these funds to fight the dismantling of USAID and USAGM, two of our member agencies, and the executive order on eliminating collective bargaining rights. It truly has been one of the most trying times in the history of our organization. Job One remains to defend our members and AFSA as we go forward. I am proud that, with your help and the work of our great staff, we have met this existential moment and will continue to fight for you and the nonpartisan, professional Foreign Service that we know and love. We started our term in office knowing that with tight budgets and a divided Congress, we would need to look for low- or no-cost ways to improve the lives of our members and strengthen the Foreign Service. We got Fly America Act exemptions if U.S. airlines could not or would not allow your pets to travel with you. And we got the CDC to open more ports of entry in the U.S. and labs overseas to make rabies regulations easier to comply with for our members. Some of he 2023-2025 AFSA Governing Board. AFSA/MARK PARKHOMENKO 2023-2025 AFSA Governing Board Term Report President’s Message AFSA also celebrated the 100th anniversary of both the Foreign Service and our great organization by leveraging this milestone to get the word out about the important work that we do. Thanks to everyone, including our retirees, for participating in this effort by writing op-eds for their hometown newspapers and other media outlets. We raised funds to celebrate in style, hosting a gala in the State Department Diplomatic Reception Rooms, featuring then–Secretary of State Antony Blinken as keynote speaker, and a subsequent party for our members on the roof of the Watergate Hotel. The second year of our term started out well. While building on the success of the Foreign Service Families Act, we received an unprecedented 10-year authorization for overseas comparability pay (OCP). Now AFSA has the space and time to work to make this authorization permanent and advocate for the last one-third tranche of OCP. We also got bipartisan support for per diem for local Foreign Service hires—something that we had been Tom Yazdgerdi
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